Friday, October 22, 2010

the "holy" grade

how coud i forget about the "most" important thing?
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does anybody need a grade to describe bouldering like that?

﻿well because it was never about a grade. it was about a dream: climbing a line, linking a logical start with a logical ending. despite looking WAY to hard first, the holds where there, so there had to be a way through it. spending hours and hours, days and days in solving an "impossible" puzzle and then push the body as far as it gets. that is what this boulder was about for me and then "numbers" disappear from itself - you just want to DO it - and it really does not matter anymore if 7A or 8A or 9A or what ever. ﻿

entry moves into the hard moves of part 1: close to the ground....

anyway, i will give it a try: it can be put it in pieces and compared to others: IKARUS is arround a 7C+ linking into a hard 8A - thats about the same numbers as the "neverendingstory, 8B+" in avers - just the other way round and ikarus/deadalus feels even more physical (and more fun to climb) to me.

...are often the hardest moves (the single hardest move at the beginning of the second part)

the next 5moves to gain the easy topout-part are "just" arround 6C/7A and from the bottom one coud think that this ads "arithmetically" nothing to the "NUMBER". but for me it was a BIG diffrence. up to IKARUS i climbed super safe and controlled. the next 4 "easy" moves i was totally out of controll and my "flight" up DEADALUS nearly "crashed". ﻿

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so can it be the SAME grade?! difficulty-wise it was something totally diffrent but as grades have "depth" its may the same grade. but where is the line between the grades? and if a grading-scale can not tell me such an obvious diffrences in difficulty then i just dont need such a "tight" grading-system! it woud be enough to state that DEADALUS is a HARD 8th grade boulder. the grading system may failed here (for me), but i can make a relation to how difficult DEADALUS felt compared to other boulders i did. you can find that relation/order in the column to the right where i put in the boulders i climbed. for me DEADALUS was for sure the hardest thing i climbed up today.
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topping out on deadalus - better dont crash ;)

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i will let others the "honor" to debate about that PRECISE grade that anyway just does not exist - i will stay with what FRED said in the "core"-movie about his "L'isola che non c'è" : "...i dont expect anybody to judge about me and my climbing; whats right, whats wrong. the GREAT thing about climbing is that there are NO rules from humans, just what nature gave to us. i saw the line, i liked it very much - and i climbed it..."
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i like the climbing very much - great block - tricky and power - my style... ;) the surrounding is amazing BUT there is a road just 20m below the block - so easy approach, but i really do not recommend to climb (on the traumlandblock) on weekends as the organ-donators (bikers) with their roaring machines make climbing pretty uncomfortable :(